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The link is also in the synopsis
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Basara's left knee gave out the moment he hit the roof, sending him stumbling through a line of wet laundry. He didn't have it in him to curse as he clawed away the sticky fabric tugging at his face and then rolled onto his bruised shoulder when his feet couldn't take his weight. Hastily, with a spike of panic, he whipped his head back to where he had come from, and though he couldn't see it, he knew it was close.
Even after three days, two cities, one river—he hadn't been able to shake it; sooner or later, it had found him. He knew the risks when he took the jobs, but the money was enough to resolve any misgivings.
He panted as he sprinted toward the ten-foot gap to the next tenement, the back of his throat aching with each breath. The twilight sky above was already a dark purple, and if the threat wasn't right at his back, he would've welcomed darkness. Below, the streetlights painted the streets in amber. From his height, he looked for a main street with heavy pedestrian traffic to get lost in, but couldn't see any, so he scanned the layout and made an educated guess. He vaulted over the parapet and aimed for the low roof. Mid-descent, he faintly heard a whistle before a surujin hit him around the ankles, snapping his legs together. A yelp escaped him as he barely managed to pull himself into a roll to break his fall, but not without further agonising his shoulder. With a heart wildly hammering against his chest, he cut himself free with a kunai and sprinted to find cover.
Pure instinct and experience let Basara subconsciously deduce the direction the surujin came from by how it hit him, and he turned his head to spot a shadowy figure draped in a cloak two buildings away, mid-throw of a kunai he could barely see in the low light.
He involuntarily yelled as he deflected the projectiles, sparks lighting up his vision.
He jumped behind the door to the roof moments before the next volley of kunai, then quickly decided being in the open was no longer safe; he desperately looked around until he spotted a commercial building with floors of office space and crashed through a window in the hallway. Even if his pursuer spotted the broken window, it would have to consider whether he went upstairs or downstairs or hid in one of the many offices—buying Basara time to escape in an unseen direction.
A door in the hallway suddenly opened. Basara snarled as he rushed the door, slamming it hard into the person behind it. A cleaning lady cried out as she collapsed, and dirty water from the bucket of supplies splashed across the floor. He paused only for a moment before kicking her in the head.
He opened a few more doors in hopes that it would slow his pursuer down.
But as he skipped down full flights of stairs in leaps, a kunai fell down the gap in the stairwell, a tag fluttering at its tail. Basara's breath caught in his throat; he braced himself, but not fast enough, for an explosion that never came; instead, the tag burned bright like magnesium.
Unable to turn his head in time, he felt the light pierce his eyes. "Fuck," he cursed as his heel slipped on the edge of a step and sent him tumbling down and finally into the wall at the bottom.
His vision was full of burning black spots.
It reminded him of his days in service as a Leaf shinobi and the mission that screwed his life over. It was a couple of years after the Nine-Tails Attack, when his chūnin team leader was transferred to the village and took three of his genin with him. Basara was one of them. He was bright-eyed and full of grand expectations for his future, expecting a meteoric rise, but reality was grounded.
His chūnin leader was given what he considered a dead-end assignment. Not wanting to get stuck, Basara decided to ditch his old team and start anew. He was in the Hidden Leaf Village, the seat of power for all shinobi in the nation; now that he had the opportunity, he wanted more for himself.
It took him a couple of years, but he managed to make some connections with some clan folk because that's where the real power lay.
Just when things were looking up, he was invited to join a mission to eliminate a bandit group that had been causing problems along one of the major trade routes.
It was an easy mission, especially with a chūnin at the helm. However, during the fight, the bandit leader had a cache of flash tags that he triggered right in front of Basara, who couldn't see properly for a few days afterwards. However, the embarrassment was all but forgotten when they cleared out the bandit camp and found something far more unexpected.
A pouch of red rubies of absurdly high quality.
After interrogating the bandit leader, they learned the source was a cheapskate merchant who cut corners to make more profit by not hiring proper protection for such high-quality merchandise. The only reason they still had the gems was that selling them was far beyond their scope; they didn't know a fence they could trust to sell the rubies without getting cheated.
At that point, the chūnin leading the team suggested something that plunged the team into silence.
"No one would know if we took this for ourselves."
Basara still remembered his heart skipping a beat. He had pocketed things from bandit clean-ups before, but nothing like that.
"What about them?" he asked, pointing to the bandits.
"It's unfortunate, but the bandits presented a fierce and reckless fight and left us no choice but to resort to lethal means… resulting in their deaths. That may be what my report will look like," said the Sarutobi chūnin.
That's exactly what the official report said.
They divided the proceeds from the ruby sales into six portions: the chūnin took two portions, and the genin took one portion each. Two months later, they had the portions in cash. Basara suspected the chūnin had pocketed some of their portions, but it still was more money than he had ever seen.
And while he couldn't spend his gains freely without arousing suspicion, knowing he had a nest egg let him sleep soundly at night. Looking back, he undoubtedly should've worried, because it took only a month for the Leaf Military Police Force to knock on his door and drag him into custody. They had been after the fence for a while and caught him when he got careless selling one of his wares. He babbled about Basara's team to the Police Force, and, as it happened, before they were stolen, one of the court nobles had already paid for the rubies, and law enforcement across the nation had been looking for them.
It wasn't looking good for him because the court noble was out for blood. But as he was in custody, his team leader—who somehow wasn't kept in custody despite being accused of the same crime—visited him, and brought along someone.
The moment the man introduced himself as a Shimura and offered his help, Basara knew he would either be cheated out of everything he got or see a light at the end of the tunnel.
The Shimura made it clear that Basara was looking at years of hard labour and that there was no clean way to avoid it, but he could have the next best thing. The solution was simple. Though he would be convicted and sentenced to hard labour, Basara would never reach the prison labour camp. The court noble was never going to visit the prison to check, and the Shimura had connections with the warden to make sure no one would notice he was missing.
That clan was always a shady bunch.
Basara would have to leave his life and identity behind, but he would be a free man in most senses of the word. It would only cost him all the money he had earned from the rubies he had hidden and claimed to the police he didn't have in the first place.
It wasn't like he had a choice, so he took the offer.
On his way to the labour camp, he was taken out of the wagon, given a bag of his belongings and some money and then sent on his way with some instructions on how to live from then on until all was forgotten.
Ever since then, he had been a freelancer. It was a worse life than even before when he transferred to the Hidden Leaf Village. The dead-end job his original chūnin team leader had taken looked mighty attractive to him. For the longest time, he had to be careful about the jobs he took in case someone ran a background check, which meant taking the lowest-rung jobs that paid the least. It was only after building a new reputation for years that he could safely take higher-profile jobs, and even now, he wished he had never gone to the Hidden Leaf Village in the first place.
Basara tried to blink the blind spots away, but it didn't help much. The dimly lit stairwell didn't do his vision any favours. He didn't take any chances and immediately wove hand seals for a Fire Release ninjutsu, aiming it upward to fill the stairwell with flames as a blockade. The worry about the building catching on fire? He wasn't going to be waiting to be trapped inside. There were windows in the staircase, and he immediately crashed out one.
He was counting on the fire being loud enough to drown out the shattering glass, but as he fell, he heard a second pane break and glanced up to see a fluttering cloak. Whether it was the streetlights or the firelight inside the building, it illuminated what Basara had been hiding for the past few days, and he immediately knew his life might as well be over a second time when he saw the white mask of an ANBU.
However, he wasn't going out without a fight.
He didn't have time to weave hand seals before he hit the ground, so Basara focused on landing. He deflected a volley of shuriken from the ANBU mid-air, landed and immediately leapt just enough to get out of the operative's range, but not enough that he couldn't close the distance in an instant.
His feet flinched in anticipation, and he readied a kunai. The moment the operative planted their feet, he rushed ahead; the operative's legs were engaged and couldn't move for only a moment.
He took full advantage and drove forward with the sharp blade. The operative, unable to move, had no choice but to engage with limited mobility. Two kunai clashed, striking a brilliant spark that illuminated the white mask with the bird motif staring back at him. Basara pushed harder and made a quick second strike. The operative had no choice but to raise her hand if she didn't want to get stabbed in the chest. Basara internally rejoiced when the kunai cut through cloth, but his excitement bottomed out when instead of feeling flesh, he felt a metal vambrace.
Basara clicked his tongue and swung the kunai in an upward arc. The opportunity ended as the operative stepped into the strike, her braced forearm crashing against Basara's wrist. The impact deadened the nerves in his wrist, weakening his grip. Before the blade could drop, the operative's hand shot forward, gripping the canvas of Basara's jacket. She yanked him forward and drove a hardened knee directly into Basara's thigh. The muscle seized instantly in a painful cramp. As Basara buckled, he wildly threw a left hook, his knuckles scraping uselessly across the unyielding bird mask.
The operative kicked him in the stomach. Basara flew out and barely stopped a few inches from the building on the opposite side of the street. He didn't let himself be rattled and immediately wove hand seals.
The operative, seeing the hand movements, paused in her steps and wove the exact same seals.
Both shinobi exhaled a violent torrent of chakra.
Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu
Two massive spheres of superheated orange flame erupted in the confined street, expanding until they collided in the dead centre. The concussive boom rattled the windows of the buildings nearby. The alley instantly turned into an oven, the localised heat evaporating the sweat off Basara's face.
For a second, only the roaring wall of fire separated them before a shadow burst straight through the wall of dying flames. The operative didn't wait for the fire to dissipate. She charged right through the backdraft, the edges of her cloak actively smouldering.
The operative feinted a high roundhouse, forcing Basara to abandon his hand seals and raise both arms in a panicked guard. Instantly, she dropped her centre of gravity, shooting forward to ram her shoulder directly into Basara's sternum. The tackle lifted Basara off his feet and drove him brutally into the brick wall behind him. The breath left Basara in a hollow wheeze, the mortar scraping the skin on his back. Before he could slide down the masonry, the ANBU pinned him there, pressing a rigid forearm ruthlessly across Basara's windpipe. Basara clawed frantically at the operative's arm, his boots scrambling for purchase in the dirt. The operative ignored the scratching, leaning her entire body weight into the choke while her free hand systematically drove short, piston-like punches into Basara's floating ribs and abdomen until all the air was punched out of him, and when he went limp from the shortage of oxygen, she cracked him across the face, knocking him out.
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Tern wondered if it was because of how she had done in inciting and organising the strike among the ironsmiths working under the Iron King Baizan that most of her work since then had been away from home, taking her all around the Land of Fire. She realised it also had something to do with being a Shimura, and as it stood, working inside the village wasn't the best choice. She did wish, however, that she was working on the Arborist squad because that's where Ratel had devoted most of his time and attention since his rise to lieutenant. They were doing some very interesting stuff there that she wanted to be a part of.
Still, she was more than happy to be doing genuine work instead of wasting her time in the village, even if it kept her away from home. Though she wasn't worried about that ever happening. Ratel would rather ship them out of his unit than let them sit free.
She did enjoy a few perks. She often worked alone, which more often than not was preferable because teamwork, even when the best people were involved, was a lot of effort and annoyance. Whereas she had plenty of freedom to approach a problem however she wanted. Not to mention, people were so much more receptive to ANBU authority outside the Hidden Leaf Village; clan shinobi or those in higher positions really didn't like being told to do things they didn't like—and no one liked ANBU.
A groan roused her out of her thoughts. Sitting in a metal chair, she looked at the man hanging from ropes around his wrists that held him up just high enough that though his feet touched the ground, he couldn't rest any weight on them. His entire body was covered in bruises after a few hours of interrogation.
The man was named Basara, and much to Tern's surprise, he was supposed to be dead. He was sentenced to hard labour for his crimes, but he had died three years into his sentence, so it was jarring when she found him alive and healthy. The situation clearly resulted from corruption in the system, though she also thought his punishment was far too harsh for his crimes.
"Are you ready to talk?" Tern asked.
Basara groaned. She couldn't understand why he hadn't been forthcoming, even though he was a freelancer with no deep loyalty to the people who had hired him.
But it seemed he was finally ready to cooperate, and after all the work she had done on him, he didn't have the energy to raise his voice. Tern got up and leaned close to his mouth to hear him speak, and after a minute of barely audible words, she stepped back.
"…P-Please let me down," Basara muttered.
Tern didn't let him down immediately because she was still wrapping her head around what she had heard. She wanted to be part of the Arborist squad, but it seemed Takuma really liked her because he had made her part of something that had the potential to make even the Arborist folks envious.
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